


Bower

by perpetuallycaffeinated



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crack, M/M, Nesting, bird!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetuallycaffeinated/pseuds/perpetuallycaffeinated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's favorite items begin to go missing. Who could be behind it...?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bower

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolute pure crack. I apologize for none of it.

Things start disappearing for three weeks before either of the Winchester brothers notice. It’s small things at first. Every so often the boys can’t find spent shotgun shells during the hunt clean-up. Sam swears that he hasn’t taken out the trash, but the bottles from the night before are gone.    
  
Dean thinks that they’re just being forgetful. Sam is more suspicious. The next night they spend drinking themselves to sleep he leaves the pile of green and blue bottles inside a ring of salt.    
  
The next morning, Sam wakes up to an empty circle.   
  
“Dean,  something  is following us!” He insists, pointing to the circle. Dean just scoffs and digs through his duffel bag.    
  
“Either you’re trying to punk me with this crap, or something  is  following us, and all it’s doing is stealing crap we don’t need. I don’t--” The older brother freezes, eyes widening as he stares at something inside the duffel bag. When he speaks again, any hint of teasing is gone. “This isn’t funny, Sammy. Where’s my Busty Asian Beauties.”    
  
“What?” Sam screws up his face and thinks that Dean is trying to tease him. “Come on Dean, you  saw  me put the salt around the--”   
  
“ I said where’s my Busty Asian Beauties!?”   Dean snaps. He upends the duffel, spilling its contents out onto the sheets. There’s his neatly rolled up kit of knives and guns, a few changes of clothes, two half-empty bottles of rotgut and....absolutely no pornography. Sam’s expression shifted from an unamused bitchface to one of shock. Dean clung to that porno collection with a tenacity that put Sam’s half-hearted Cinemax viewings to shame. They’d even weathered a year in Lisa’s garage.    
  
And now, in the middle of the night, they’d managed to disappear from under the noses of two experienced hunters.    
  
“Whatever’s been taking our bottles must have taken your...your magazines,” Sam snaps right back, pointing back to the empty ring of salt. “How come you only take things like this seriously when it interferes with your porn!?”    
  
“We don’t have time for your PMS right now,” Dean grunts, starting to shove his remaining possessions back into his duffel.    
  
After that, Dean takes the disappearances even more seriously than Sam does. It’s not just the need to find justice for pornnapping. Other things keep disappearing at the same rate, but there’s a shift in the focus of the thievery. At first, it had been shiny, colorful odds and ends that went missing. Now, it’s things that Dean loves.    
  
The older Winchester brother’s favorite shirt is a faded blue flannel mess. It doesn’t have any real monetary value, but it fits Dean just right. Even after a trip through the washing machine, it’s still got something to it that marks it as undeniably his.    
  
By the next Thursday, it’s gone.   
  
Three days later, Dean can’t find his razor.    
  
Another day marks the disappearance of  one  shoelace.    
  
Dean is slowly going insane, while Sam’s torn between concern for his brother’s sanity and hilarity. Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t steal things that would interfere with Dean’s safety or the Hunt, so there’s no immediate danger that Sammy can think of. Every morning is a tense wait to see what new curse Dean will spit while searching through his duffel bag. As much as he can see it bothers his brother, Sam has to admit it’s really,  really funny.    
  
The breaking point comes on another Thursday evening. The brothers are holed up in a motel just outside the Kentucky border, and Dean is still mourning the loss of  another  razor. Sam has finally taken pity on his older brother; their dinner tonight consists of two mammoth bacon double cheeseburgers and slices of fresh-baked blackberry pie from a nearby diner.    
  
They’re just sitting down at the tiny motel room’s table to eat when there’s the sound of shrieking metal and shattering glass outside of their room, followed by an explosion that makes the  windows rattle. Sam and Dean’s heads both snap up, and nearly knock over their chairs racing to the door. Dean reaches it first, fear for his baby driving him forward as he throws the door open, bracing himself for the worst.    
  
The Impala sits where they left it, not a scratch on her. She’s completely alone in the motel parking lot, and there’s nothing to be seen down either stretch of the highway they pulled off of, either. Already on edge, Dean just keeps staring into the distance, trying to make sense of the noise. Sam just sighs, turns around, and sees something that makes his stomach drop.    
  
“Dean...” he says, physically bracing himself. “Don’t turn around.”   
  
Dean promptly disobeys, whipping back around to face the room. The sound that comes out of his throat isn’t a word, nor is there a word for it.    
  
Sam’s cheeseburger and pie remain where they were. Dean’s have disappeared. The plates and fork are exactly where he left them; it’s as though there never was food on that side of the table.    
  
Before Sam can stop him, Dean’s turned back around and is running out of the motel and into the parking lot, yelling at the top of his lungs.   
  
“I WILL END YOU!!! I WILL FIND YOU AND END WHATEVER FUCKING EXISTENCE YOU HAVE. YOU ALREADY HAVE MY PORN! LEAVE ME MY PIE!  LEAVE ME MY PIE!”   
  
He takes a deep breath to continue screaming, but freezes in the middle of the parking lot, meeting Sam’s bewildered gaze before he takes off across the highway, leaps a fence and takes off for the line of woods.   
  
“What--DEAN!” Sam bellows. As soon as he sees Dean clear the fence, Sam takes off after his brother. If he’s finally snapped, he’s not going to just watch him flee into the forests of West Virginia alone. “What are you doing!?”   
  
“I can smell it Sammy!” Dean screams back, not slowing down. “I can smell my pie!”   
  
Sam is just a few feet behind his brother, both of them crashing through brush as Dean presses on, cursing whatever force robbed him of porn, pie and burgers.    
  
All at once, Dean slides to a halt, Sam nearly crashing into his brother as he follows suit.    
  
“Son...of...a bitch.”    
  
Dean breathes the word, and Sam knows what he’s looking at, because he sees it too, eyes wide and mouth hanging slightly open.   
  
They’ve stumbled into an artificial clearing. Sam knows it’s artificial, because trees don’t grow like that. Young saplings have been bent, some torn up and woven together with still-standing trees to form two great, sloping walls.    
  
“It’s a  bower ,” he whispers back, not taking his eyes off of the construct. Now he knows where all those bottles went. The walls of the great bower  glitter,  and when Sam looks closer, he can see broken shards of green, blue and brown. It’s broken bits of beer bottle glass, strewn into the trees. The longer he stares, the longer he can identify each and every thing that’s gone missing from Dean’s possession. There are his razors, adding a glint of gunmetal grey. Near the bottom is a drape of blue flannel; Dean’s favorite shirt. Sam is willing to bet that there’s a used shoelace somewhere in there.    
  
And standing between the two arching sides of the bower stands Castiel.    
  
The angel didn’t seem surprised to see them. In fact, he looked completely ready for their arrival, holding two paper plates. Resting on them were Dean’s missing pie and cheeseburger. Looking expectantly from from one brother to the other, Castiel waited for either of them to make a move.    
  
“Hello Dean. Sam.”    
  
His eyes barely flicker over to the younger brother before honing back in on Dean. Castiel doesn’t put down the food, but he shifts slightly, rolling his shoulders and  poses.    
  
Sam is a nerd. He watches things like the BBC, History channel, and the Discovery Channel. And right now, it’s information from the latter that’s pouring into his brain, making all of this insanity finally lock into place.    
  
“Dean...” he murmurs, eyes still glued to the scene in front of him. “Remember that show you were laughing at me for watching? With the bird that arranges sticks and pretty things for the other bird it wants to have sex with?”   
  
“Yeah?”   
  
“ You’re the other bird. ”    
  
Sam would swear later that he could hear Dean’s brain breaking in that instant, but before he could confirm his brother’s complete break from sanity, Castiel spoke again.    
  
“It seemed like such a nicer mating ritual than the ones I’ve seen humans use,” he murmured, looking up to inspect his work. “Do you not appreciate it, Dean?” Sam imagines he hears an unsure note in Castiel’s voice. It looks like his brother hears it too; the question snaps Dean out of his stupor. Moving forward, he takes the food out of Castiel’s hands, setting them carefully on the ground for later. Sam stays behind, outside of the bower, and can’t help but roll his eyes. Of  course  pie and burgers are important when compared to an angel’s declaration of bird-love.   
  
But then Dean does something else, that makes Sam rethink the severity of his brother’s emotional problems. The tension in Dean’s back grows as he and the angel stare at each other, drawing him up until the man finally  acts,  pulling Castiel into a tight hug. From this distance, he can still hear Dean, even though his voice is a low murmur, intended for the privacy of the bower.    
  
“You’re a friggin weirdo, you know that? You can’t just steal a man’s pie...”    
  
Castiel nods, but from what Sam sees of his face, it doesn’t look like the angel is even paying attention to Dean’s chastising. His eyes are closed in something approaching bliss, sliding his own hands up the hunters back in an equally tight embrace.    
  
“Does your entrance into the bower mean that I don’t have to do the mating dance?”    
  
Castiel’s question is met with a huffed laugh. Sam knows that one: it’s Dean’s patented “I’m hiding my feelings but I love you” laugh. Looks like it’s time to get back to the motel and leave the lovebirds alone. Sam can’t help a smirk at the thought. This was amazing. It was something that made his brother happy,  and  he could tease him about it.    
  
“Hey! I’m gonna go make sure everything’s okay back at the motel!” Sam shouts. He doesn’t want to come any closer to the bower area; Cas might still be stuck in bird-mode and chase him out. Dean waves a hand back at him, shooing Sam away before tilting his head and  yes,  his brother just kissed an angel. Time to go.    
  



End file.
